Editing in v12b2

Today i had a typical online editing task, we have a h264 trailer that is cut from the dailes, a trailer editor who can't be found, and a deliverables requrment for a brodacast spec trailer due tomorrow... so we have to eyematch the thing

- start in Resolve, scene cut detect, that goes fast, but is very inaccurate, so go thought the 90 second timeline and add/delete as needed.. 25 min later it's done...

- start to edit in Resolve, timeline responce is still unworkable, laggy, hangs, jumps around, hangs somemore... switching source to record is painfully slow... get twelve edits matched in 40 min, throw in the towel...

- start over again in Media Composer, takes 22min to manualy razor up the timeline, and 45 min to complete the eyematching top to tail includeing outputting a master

same machine btw, not a powerhouse... z600 / 12 procs / 24 gig / Q4000 / SAS drive.. sources were a 2k dpx sequnce of the colortimed master, and a 720p Qt of the trailer, both live on the array, MC plays the 2k dpx rt without breaking a sweat, Resolve gags at 12fps...

did try it in the real world, and in the real world v12b2 far from the best in class...once again if the hype was not so OTT, there would be a bit more leaway given.. but as this is supposed to be a world class editing, amazing and powerful etc etc etc... it kinda falls short.

More work on timeline navagation seems to be needed before Resolve can be considered a real world working tool in the same class as Media Composer

You're delivering an H.264 for broadcast? Or working from H.264 originals? Or the reference is H.264? I always specify a timecoded ProResLT as the reference file.

I just did a conform with about 270 shots, 40 of which had to be done by eye (or hand), and it was annoying but not impossible. Resolve wasn't the problem -- the shot naming and timecode issues were the problem for me.

Scene detection isn't necessary if the client gives you an EDL. If they don't have an EDL, charge them for the time. How many cuts are in a 90-second trailer? Even if it's 90, it shouldn't take too long.

nonononono..... not h264 deliverable!

what i had was a h264@720 that was a clear qc fail, a 2k dpx sequence, no editor to be found and a delivery sched to be met....no editor means no edl either... if he could have been found i would have just sent it back with the DPX files and asked him to do it....

eyematched the dpx over top of the h264.. exported a DNxHR10bit

weirdly enough Resolve's scene detect cut up a bunch of lightning, but missed day ext to night int....

and on to the actual cutting in ... the wait while it goes from source window to record window, and wait some more... then scale out the timeline, than wait, wait, wait.. then realise you went to far, scale back in, wait, wait wait... the ui updates, switch back to source mon, wait, wait, wait.... with track opacity set to 50% and loads of slideing the DPX back and forth a frame at time... you know the gig.. v12 was just a pig to try to get anything done

It really seems much better than v11, but MC is so much more fluid a working tool, it's at least as much better an editor as Resolve is a better gradeing system... and MC could playback easly, where Resolve gagged, admittidly on a machine under spec'd for Resolve, but up to spec for MC...

anyway i really did try to make it work, my life would be easier if it did, MC does not have scene detect for example... but the pain of dealing with Resolve's (somewhat improved) timeline issues makes MC faster overall in my hands

Seemsl ike an area where some more develpment time might go along way.... it certianly feels like it's much better, but much better is still no where near good enough, and that's valid feedback... would not want developers to walk away from v12 saying "there, the timeline interaction is sorted.. let's move on"

Dermot, I know it's a workaround but I found the only way to get decent playback on my ageing iMac was to select 8bit not 10bit monitoring on the output. It's much less laggy in the Edit page now.

The thing that took Resolve from unusable to quite fast for editing on my iMac was turning off thumbnails for the video. Pretty much exactly how you described

...timeline responce is still unworkable, laggy, hangs, jumps around, hangs somemore

Dealing with H.264 footage seems to be an issue for Resolve. It is a bit better than it was in Resolve 11, but still it cannot be compared to something like Premiere Pro. The only workaround I found when dealing with H.264 footage is to select the source clips and generate optimized media for all of them. It takes a bit of time, but after that, the timeline responds very well. I am not sure if this would fix your problem, but I just wanted to share my experience.

Dealing with H.264 footage seems to be an issue for Resolve. It is a bit better than it was in Resolve 11, but still it cannot be compared to something like Premiere Pro. The only workaround I found when dealing with H.264 footage is to select the source clips and generate optimized media for all of them. It takes a bit of time, but after that, the timeline responds very well. I am not sure if this would fix your problem, but I just wanted to share my experience.

what format do you recommend for the optimized media? I'm not sure what the default is but there seem to be several options now

what format do you recommend for the optimized media? I'm not sure what the default is but there seem to be several options now

Frankly, I haven't tried all of them. I am working on a Windows machine, and I used one format only (out of the couple of options I have) which was the DNxHR HQ (I am not sure what is the Apple ProRes equivalent).

For even better performance, you can set the Resolution of the optimized media to half, quarter, or even less than that if you have a slow machine.

The thing that took Resolve from unusable to quite fast for editing on my iMac was turning off thumbnails for the video. Pretty much exactly how you described

...timeline responce is still unworkable, laggy, hangs, jumps around, hangs somemore

yea, i thought about that, but eyematching 90 seconds of shots from a 90 min feature, i really needed the thumbnails on the timeline to see a match in the source footage as i went through it

i could try to cache the h264, and see if that helps atall... but i would not to want to lose the thumbnails for this particular gig, that would be as good a reason to move to another system as the laggy random timeline navagation.. but kinda suck equaly